Like many others, I was affected by James Horner’s death and touched by the various tributes paid by his friends, colleagues, collaborators and fans. There is little I can do in the way of tribute other than write about his music – and it strikes me that the body of work he developed over his 35-year film music career is one of the most impressive that anyone’s ever built up and one that’s particularly worthy of writing about.

I’ve reviewed many of his scores over the years, most of them some time ago and am now keen to re-explore his body of work and consider it in the context of what we now know is, sadly, the full extent of his writing (not to mention to reflect my own changing opinions – sometimes drastically so). Not all of his scores have been released on album – and I don’t have quite all the albums – so I can’t do everything, but over the coming weeks and months I intend to write about everything I can.

There is little point in me rewriting reviews I’ve written in the last five years or so, so with some exceptions they will remain untouched. The rest will be either updated or completely rewritten and the many gaps for scores I have never reviewed will mostly be filled. There’s no intention to sugar-coat any opinions given events – if I am generally rather enthusiastic (and sometimes very enthusiastic) about his work, it is only because that is how I genuinely feel about it. But I don’t like all of it and won’t shy away from saying so.

Below is a complete list of his scores, with links to titles already reviewed as part of this series (the old, un-updated reviews will still be accessible from the main review index but will not appear here until updated). I won’t be doing them in any particular order and given how many there are, it will take a long time to complete. The easiest way to keep informed when new titles appear is to follow Movie Wave on Facebook or Twitter.

As always, I encourage people to leave their own feedback in the comment sections of reviews – whether you agree or disagree with my own assessments, it’s always interesting to read yours.

I was heartbroken and devastated to hear the news of James Horner’s tragic passing. It was as if I had lost a dear family member or friend. James Horner has been such an inspiration and influence in how I write my music. I listen to his film scores nearly every day and own nearly all of the available albums of his scores. I enjoy playing his music on the piano, as well. In other words, I was a huge fan.
This weekend I am choosing to celebrate Horner by watching films that he composed the music for. I started last night with Michael Apted’s film Class Action. I know it’s not Horner’s most notable score, but it fit the film like a glove.
I have a classic lineup ready to go – Field of Dreams, A Beautiful Mind, Titanic, Star Trek 2 and 3, etc.
I think it is kind of awesome that we will still get to experience some of his music in the remaining part of this year, for the first time. It’s great to know that we still have Southpaw, Wolf Totem, The 33 and Living in the Age of Airplanes to look forward to! (Though of course most, including myself, have already enjoyed the treasures that Wolf Totem had in store for us!)
I just want to say Thank you, James Southall, for always writing great reviews. You are one of the first sites I go to for recommendations and I perceived you were a James Horner fan like myself. Thank you, again. I look forward to your James Horner Odyssey, as I know I’m looking forward to mine!

Well I’m certainly looking forward to your future reviews in this series and I think its a great idea. I have been listening to some of my old Horner albums over the past few days for obvious reasons. My sense of loss has only increased, sadly. Where is another Glory or Legends of the Fall ever going to come from?

[…] Horner’s music. Instead of providing a full review to each and every score (you may resort to MovieWave’s James Horner Review Odyssey for that), I will summarise his work by year (in order of the movie’s release date, knowing […]

summer 2014 to summer 2015 – This was on of his very best release years!!! 3 diffrent movies, which he all scores very good and diffrently, 2 documentations and 2 big concert works.
He leaved us with a great bang in styles! This was a genius. I miss so much the days, where I was waiting for the next thing like last year til the tragic day.

Composed by James Horner MCA / 1988 / 58m With Disney in a rut, other companies' animated movies were more… Read more…

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